Sunday, April 24, 2011

Crazy Storms

We've had some crazy weather and storms out here.The other week the tornado sirens went off an hour before any storms came, because the system was moving 80mpg. The wind killed my tulips but no major damage.

This past Fri night at 1:30am, I woke up to some serious thunder and lightning. Lucy gets nervous, so I was checking the radar on my iPhone and saw the image below (you do not want to be the red pin).Then at 1:45 am, a huge lightning bolt struck very close by and it felt like the entire house jumped. My security alarm and everything went crazy, so I thought for sure me or my neighbor had been hit by lightning. I stayed up for a bit incase a fire started. Things that did not work at the time included, the phone, all lights and ceiling fans that touched the attic. And my sump pump, which I spent most of my time on that night with all the water we had.

After checking things out and no fire I went to bed around 3am. I had reasoned that the lightning must have hit close and traveled in through my phone line since most downstairs light and TVs etc still worked.

I woke up around 9am to look around in the daylight, I was drawn to my guest bedroom to find this in the wall above my window.And it looked like I hulked out in my sleep and pulled my window frame apart!

So I was directly hit by lighting at the peak of my roof above my garage. The bolt came down popping out the wood, it's hard to see unless you zoom in but parts of the bricks are missing, it shot them out like buckshot into my neighbors siding. Then came down through the window through my drywall.

All in all, I am super lucky, no fire, so far not too much electrical damage. I've had the Fire Dept, Plumber, Electrician, Roofer over. Mostly just the structural, cosmetic stuff left.

The only weird thing is, since then I have had the strangest dreams...